I hate to be so predictable, but I am in favor of having more land set
aside as wilderness in Washington state, or anywhere else in the USA
for that matter. Because my opinion on this is currently defined as
"liberal" (although it is objectively a conservative position) I
expect few people will bother to hear why I think as I do. They have
learned to dismiss any "liberal" position out of hand. Nevertheless,
I'll explain briefly.

I live in a Western state where a very high percentage of the land is
federally owned and controlled. Folks from other parts of the country
like to imagine that the West is full of wilderness. That may have
been true in 1940. It isn't true today. Of the federal land that has
not already been set aside as wilderness, only a tiny fraction
(something like 3%) retains enough wilderness characteristics to
qualify for the designation. The rest has been roaded, logged, grazed
or mined. It's amazing what heavy machinery can do when you apply it
decade after decade. Really, this fight is over the last few scraps of
what was once a "virgin" land.

So, why bother? Why not just let go of the last few scraps, and
squeeze out a bit more logging, grazing and mining? Why not let it
generate a little more money and jobs for those rural folk who live
out there? At least those are benefits we all can grasp, as opposed to
some airy-fairy, tree-hugging, psuedo-druidical, phony religion like
environmentalism.

It isn't simple to answer those questions, but this s how I would
approach the problem.

We already know what happens to resource-extraction communities when
the resource runs out. They become ghost towns. Just look at the
history of gold mining in the west. Gold == town. No gold == ghost
town. So, if the point is to provide jobs and keep towns alive,
letting the last bit of unprotected wilderness go through the grinder
is pointless. That's a bit like a Dust Bowl farm family grinding the
seed corn for cornmeal just before they walk away from the farm
forever. It just postpones the day of reckoning for a very short time.

When this country was founded, this continent was a storehouse of oil,
timber, minerals, and wildlife. We have been plundering the storehouse
ever since. We've been acting like a twenty-one year old who comes
into a big inheritance and starts spending like there's no tomorrow.
Except tomorrow is much, much nearer than when we began. The
storehouse has been running low for decades now. We're poking into the
last nooks and crannies.

For any civilization, any culture, any people, the name of the game is
to sustain itself over the long run. It is time to start saving what's
left of that inheritance for when we (or our descendants) truly need
it. That's why this is a deeply, deeply conservative position.
It recognizes that for all its allure, money is shallow wealth - land
is real wealth -- and that our squandering of that wealth is not a
source of good fortune, but a self-inflicted misfortune.

The only "good" to come out of squeezing out the last drop of
resources out of the last scrap of wilderness would be to prolong the
illusion that we can go on raiding the storehouse -- until it is too
late to save anything from the general wreck of that illusion.

Like you, I'm conservation-oriented, though I recognize that the
desire to preserve what little we have left is easier in the
abstract, than when you are an Nth-generation miner, logger, or
rancher faced with losing or being denied this long heritage. It's
hard to lose that history, hard to retrain as something completely
different in midlife when you don't want to, hard to understand why
you must sacrifice so that others need not. Doesn't seem quite fair.
Old habits die hard.

No question husbandry of the land entails things like sustainable
yields, watershed amd habitat preservation, and a much more
farsighted view of our national benefits. My view of government is to
be deeply suspicious of social programs that have the effect (despite
the intent) of rewarding failure or subsidizing idleness. But neither
am I the kind of conservative who feels that we benefit from soiling
our own bed because it was more immediately profitable than a trip to
the outhouse. If there are any mutual concerns for which government
is absolutely required, environmental protection is right up there.

And without any serious question, we are (in the words of David
Suzuki) burning medieval masterpieces to cook tonight's meal.
Ultimately, the problem has been (as E. O. Wilson writes) that for
the last hundred years, human breeding patterns have been far more
bacterial than primate. And as with bacteria, this trend can continue
only so long before it implodes. Will enough remain so that the
survivors can get restarted? Your (and my) preferences
notwithstanding, we have little observable reason to be optimistic.

I am not 100% sure what area they are talking about. I think it is
an area west of Steven's Pass. If so, I have hiked there and it is a
fine area [just south of the Darrington loop]. There is this about
Washington: I remember going there in the early 60's. The
Cascades were a giant green carpet flowing under the plane.
Now there is clear-cut everywhere you look. Much of Oregon is
the same. I don't know if the proposal is viable; I seem to
remember that there is another wilderness area just north of
there.

Cin: The pup is making progress. He now puts his snoozle into
the air and emits a continuous tone. It isn't much but it is a start.
We have a half hour practice every night. Maybe Aussies can't
howl but I have to give him an A for effort.

So very true Flint. Suppose we could outlaw fucking but doubt it
would work. Whether man caused or a cauldera blowing off survivors of
the next human contraction are going to find the lack of easy
energy sources a setback that could last thousands of years.

I don't know about you but I don't need any protection from the
fascist repugs. Me and my good friend Mr. Mossberg will do just
fine. Those greedy bastards try to steal from me and I'll give them
free air conditioning.